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T. S. Eliot Quotes about Poetry

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Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

Poetry, Feelings, May

T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.149, Harvard University Press

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Work, Poetry, Trying

Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Communication, Writing, Poetry

1929 Dante.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

Death, Poetry, Religion

"The Hollow Men" l. 95 (1925)

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

Writing, Poetry, Feelings

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When oxygen and sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filiament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.

Art, Oxygen, Poetry

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.16, HMH

When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.

Poetry, Done, Certain

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Notes towards the Definition of Culture”, p.119, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

Art, Poetry, Feelings

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.

Mean, Poetry, May

T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.122, Harvard University Press

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Inspirational, Time, Poetry

T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.6, Faber & Faber

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

Loneliness, Thinking, Poetry

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 122 (1917)

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Poetry, Crafts, Conscious

T.S. Eliot (2010). “The Waste Land and Other Poems”, p.92, Broadview Press

Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.

Voice, Poetry, Humans

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 129 (1917)

All art emulates the condition of ritual. That is what it comes from and to that it must always return for nourishment.

Art, Poetry, Return

It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Poetry, Tests, Genuine

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.209, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.

Poetry, Literature, Language

Poetry is a mug's game.

Games, Poetry, Mug

T.S. Eliot (2016). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 6: 1932–1933”, p.22, Faber & Faber

I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.

Thinking, America, Poetry

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